In the roadless areas that have never been logged it’s a real pleasure to see those huge things. I saw some in this area much larger than this one. They are several hundred years old, and even the dead ones are just awesome to see.

When I was working for The Nature Conservancy I attended a conference and one of the presenters was talking about how to “read” the landscape. I wonder what he’d say about that lone big tree among all the little spindly ones? Was that a fire area and the big tree the survivor?

Hard to tell but possibly, although there aren’t signs of a very recent fire. An exposed ridge like that gets a lot of lightning strikes though and there could have been several fires during the lifetime of that tree. There are other dead trees that size and several live ones that show signs of lightning strikes.

There are quite a few of these big pines spread throughout that area and they are probably a few hundred years older than the small firs and lodgepoles around them.

are you saying that the big tree is dead? I really like the photo and at first thought it would be a springboard for a post on my sowing seeds….will have to rethink it if the tree is dead…..my latest post there is a springboard from a discussion and subsequent post from malcolm and shelly

No, that big old pine is alive and doing quite well. There are others, even larger spread out through the area as well as a number of dead ones that are still standing. I kind of thought that pine was doing exactly what a big old pine was supposed to be doing and doing very well at it at that, when all of the others, the firs, were huddled together and their growth was stunted as a result.